My Biggest Complaint About Mud Flaps And Rock Guards

I’m staring at my second cracked windshield in two years and at this point I have to ask are mud flaps good for anything besides advertising?

I call them “mud flaps” but I’ve heard them called “rock guards” before. I don’t know what the difference is between a mud flap and a rock guard but I do know that mud is not responsible for cracking two of my windshields.

My windshield is not the only victim. The front of my hood and grill of my car are scarred with proof that mud flaps and rock guards don’t work. Don’t tell me they do and say, “They catch 75% of debris and greatly reduce the amount of…” Two words for ya - two windshields.

After the first windshield was cracked, I started to concentrate on mud flaps and rock guards on trucks a little bit more. If you look at them for any length of time more than a glance the next time you are on the road, you are likely to see all kinds of crap flying up from the truck and shooting under the mud flap or hitting the rock guard and… you guessed it - bouncing off and hitting cars.

My biggest complaint about mud flaps and rock guards is that after looking at them and thinking about the problem for some time now, I can’t figure out why in the hell they don’t cover the full length of the tire? It seems that most flaps are about 3/4’s of the height of the tire. Plenty of rocks are shooting out underneath the guard because it doesn’t run the full length of the tire.

I hate to say “There ought to be a law,” but there ought to be a law that mud flaps and rock guards should run the full length of the tire. What’s the harm in that?